Tag Archives: Ella Hickson

“Oil” at the Almeida Theatre

Ella Hickson’s time-travelling play overflows with contemporary concerns. Scene one shows the not-so-good life of Cornish farmers in 1889. It’s followed by a trip to Tehran in 1908, Hampstead in 1970 and a couple of forays into the future. All show the consequences of oil, or the lack of, in society. Each scene is played around the dynamic of a mother called May (Anne-Marie Duff), Orlando-like over the centuries, with her daughter, Amy, who appears just conceived, aged eight, as a teen and as a middle-aged woman. You can’t doubt the play’s ambition.

The danger here is in overwhelming your audience. Hickson manages to stop her play feeling like an online search for conspiracies with the help of director Carrie Cracknell’s inventive staging and some deliciously mischievous humour. It’s a self-consciously crazy affair, with an experimental feel that has a certain charm. But there are moments of confusion. The box-of-tricks set by Vicki Mortimer has distracting elements, while repeated motifs that steer the audience are effortful. And there’s also a pop song (by Justin Bieber) – an overused trend I wish would stop.

Sam Swann and Yolanda Kettle
Sam Swann and Yolanda Kettle

The combination of global politics and gender studies is original and startling. Matching empire and parenthood produces some charge, not least an excoriating invective when Amy’s boyfriend (Sam Swann) is dispatched by May – the play’s best scene. But depressingly, the insights here aren’t revelatory, even if they are well delivered. Scenes set in the past don’t privilege historical accuracy, those looking to the future have silly touches; both are a little too obvious about how we live now, giving rise to a sense of naïvety. This is a young writer who sees the world getting worse and is angry about it. Fair enough. An impressive, almost intimidating energy drives the play, but it lacks control.

Oil is grim stuff. Hickson is harsh on all, not just those from the past, and the play’s themes of loneliness and narcissism, allied to the selfishness of Empire, create affecting moments. Trying to help is a confusing thing and the future will be lonely and (literally) cold. Unfortunately, cynicism overwhelms the text. It’s hard to knock a play with so many ideas, a good deal of them well executed. But it’s only Duff, seconded by Yolanda Kettle who plays her daughter over the centuries, who manages to inject some real feeling and provide a reason to see the play.

Until 26 November 2016

www.almeida.co.uk

Photos by Richard H Smith

“Boys” at the Soho Theatre

The young men in Ella Hickson’s play, presumably entitled Boys because of their behaviour, are just what you might expect: crude, boorish and pretentious, with the obligatory stolen road sign and traffic cone in their squalid flat. But Hickson’s writing goes beyond stereotypes. The jokes here are on the boys themselves and the humour serves to heighten Hickson’s impressively unerring sense of the dramatic.

The cast of Boys presents a convincing group of flatmates whose young lives are complicated by a tragic suicide. Danny Kirrane stands out as the “great protector”, raising philosophical questions, and becoming increasingly unstable under pressure. It’s a nice irony that the strongest performances come from the women in the piece: Alison O’Donnell is moving as a “motor mouth” girlfriend and Eve Ponsonby superbly cast as an intelligent graduate in the grips of a moral dilemma.

Despite popping pills and attempting to party themselves into oblivion, the boys fail to have much fun. And anyone older then them isn’t going to be cheered by the fact that all the characters see “the beginning of the end” in their graduation and the world of work. Boys is pretty bleak stuff.

As Hickson broadens her play to take on the topical, there are some heavy metaphors and a series of overlong goodbyes, not helped by some indulgent direction from Robert Icke, which diminishes the piece’s power and makes you wish these boys could grow up a little faster. But why would they want to? Hickson’s point is important – the filth the boys live in isn’t of their own making, the council is on strike and the city rioting. Are the boys simply sensitive souls lost in a generational mire? Possibly your age will determine how you answer that, but it’s a question worth raising and Hickson asks it well.

Until 16 June 2012

www.sohotheatre.co.uk

Photo by Bill Knight

Written 30 May 2012 for The London Magazine